Domenic Scopa

Festive colored candles
fence an unearthed grave
as if exhuming corpses
is a sort of birthday celebration.

A forensic anthropologist,
himself a native Guatemalan,
chisels calcified deposits
collected on the collarbone
of a charred skeleton.

He’s searching for his murdered family.

Where the soil breaks
in a line of coffee bushes,
two crows flap for lime trees.
The limes look like green lights.
Reagan gave the green light here,
collateral calculated.

But what was that to the indigenous child
burned alive in the village center?
To the pregnant woman hacked in bed?

An infantile skull stares up.
Its toothy grin makes it look
as though it’s either madly laughing,
or lamenting at a joke
the flesh has played on it.